t cannot be overstated how crucial Veterans Affairs (VA) has been and continues to be to effectively caring for the people who serve the United States of America, and they have been through hell and highwater in the last couple years as everything from greedy politicians to privatization to downsizing and more has threatened the existence of this crucial service, which we’ve reported extensively about in the past.
For once, however, we’re glad to report some good news for the VA, as the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is celebrating after developing a huge new contract with them, bringing some much needed growth and stability to an often attacked and threatened service.
“Insuring that [veterans] have healthcare is a very important thing, and insuring that the workers who take care of them are also taken care of is very important,” said The Valley Labor Report host Jacob Morrison on last week’s program. “Because, much like teachers, their working conditions are the students’ learning conditions; well VA workers, their working conditions are veterans’ healing conditions.”
And that’s exactly what this new contract seeks to help with. The contract, which, as of this writing, is technically still a Tentative Agreement (TA), was officially announced by the Veterans Affairs Council and will cover 291,000 employees at the VA, “making it the largest public sector contract in the country.”
To discuss this victory and get into the details of the contract itself, William “Bill” Wetmore joined The Valley Labor Report last week. Wetmore is an AFGE National Council 3rd Vice President, Local 17 Secretary and Treasurer, and a Council Bargaining team member, and was at the frontlines through the development and announcement of this new contract.
When asked about why the development of this contract garnered such attention and support, Wetmore responded:
“I’m convinced it was the outrageous proposals that management made to us when they reopened the contract back in 2017, and we negotiated that contract, and management was found in the Federal Labor Relations authority and in courts to have engaged in illegal bargaining. And so we came back in 2020 and started bargaining again on a limited reopener — we only opened twelve, six that we chose and six that management chose.
Meanwhile there was a sidebar discussion going on, which culminated in a meeting that I and several members of the bargaining team attended with the national president of the AFGE, and on the other side the Secretary of the Department of the Veterans Affairs, as well as the chief negotiator for the department… So that kind of boiled down to the secretary kind of surprised me, and I think everyone else on our side of the table, by actually saying, ‘Well if you just give me Article 23 as we’ve tentatively agreed to, we’ll give you the rest of the contract.’ And all of a sudden it looked like we were done.”
This surprising move by the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs essentially cut down expected bargaining time by a very large margin, bringing the group to an agreement in no time at all.
To learn more about what this contract entails, watch the full interview with Bill Wetmore: